Country guides on TEFL websites can provide you with a rough idea of how much you will earn and spend after moving abroad, but they aren’t perfect. The information may be inaccurate or outdated, and those guides usually don’t reflect the fact that there is a variety of teaching roles available. When people ask me about money in Colombia, I always tell them that your income and expenses will depend on a number of factors. I think it’s important to have access to information in order to be able to make your own decisions, so I’d like to share some concrete figures with you.

Some course providers try to sugar-coat the experience of moving abroad to teach English, but the reality is that most entry-level TEFL jobs don’t pay well. There are very few locations in the world where you can make good money as a new teacher. Latin America isn’t one of those places. Colombia is a developing country that quite a lot of its citizens wish to emigrate from so they can have better opportunities abroad.

First, let’s take a look at the currency. When I moved here in 2017, I would receive 3,000 Colombian pesos for one US dollar. The currency has weakened since then; in fact, the exchange rate reached 5,000 in November 2022. The situation is a bit better now, and you’ll get around 4,000 pesos for a dollar (at the moment of writing this text), but the bottom line is that the local currency isn’t very strong. It’s very difficult for people to be able to afford a trip to another continent when earning Colombian pesos.

When it comes to common expenses, I really enjoy going out to have lunch. After moving to Manizales in 2018, I used to pay 7,000 pesos for a full lunch menu. Five years later, I usually pay 13,000 for the same kind of food in Envigado. Please note that I prefer going to small, family-run restaurants serving typical Colombian food. There are many other places where lunch menus cost much more; I just want to illustrate how much prices have risen in recent years.

When I used to go grocery shopping, I could buy a lot of stuff for 50,000 pesos. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for me to pay double that amount when going to the supermarket. In fact, using a 100,000-peso banknote isn’t a problem nowadays compared to the past when some shopkeepers didn’t want to accept it due to its high value.

The most important expense you need to take care of is your rent. There are various ways to find a place to live in, but what is clear is that prices have risen way too much in recent years. In 2018, I found a fully furnished apartment in one of the best areas of Manizales for 800,000 per month. Finding a similar deal would be impossible these days. Two years later, I got a nice apartment in Bucaramanga for 1.2 million. Again, I can’t imagine being able to get such a price in 2023. It’s also important to add that cities like Bogotá and Medellín are more expensive, and renting a furnished apartment in a good area costs a lot more these days. When you check Airbnb and Facebook groups, you may be surprised how pricey some places are. This has caused some tension and quite a few locals openly complain about gentrification and its effects on their city.

A very important figure is the minimum salary, which is what millions of Colombians earn. When I moved here in 2017, it was 820,000 pesos. It has risen to the current amount of 1,160,000, but that’s quite clearly not enough when you consider the inflation and how much more expensive everything is now. At most, that kind of salary allows one to live paycheck to paycheck in very humble conditions. Even if you are just a tourist passing through Colombia, I think it’s important to be aware of this reality.

When we turn our focus on TEFL in Colombia and what English teachers may expect to earn, it’s very important to emphasise that it’s not possible to come up with a single number since there are so many different jobs one can do. I’m going to talk about my personal story, which started in 2017 when I landed a volunteer teacher role in Villa de Leyva that involved receiving a stipend of 1.5 million pesos per month. That was enough to pay 500,000 for a private room and leave me with a million to spend on whatever I needed.

In 2018, I found a job at Centro Colombo Manizales paying 2.1 million per month. It wasn’t much money by European standards, but I had a full-time contract, which meant paid holidays, health insurance and pension payments covered by the employer, a 13^th salary (prima), and a bonus to be paid at the end of the contract (cesantías). That kind of money helped me cover all my expenses and save enough for a couple of trips in Colombia. The disadvantage was that I had to work long hours, so I decided to move to Bucaramanga and work as an hourly-paid teacher instead, which allowed me to focus on my professional development and finish my Delta.

If you approach language academies now, they should definitely offer you better terms than that due to the fact that the prices of everything in Colombia have almost doubled in the past six years. I do think that working for institutes such as Centro Colombo Americano is good for gaining experience as a teacher. However, I don’t see that as a long-term option since you won’t be able to save much money for the future. If you plan to settle down and stay in the country, you may need to look for other kinds of jobs.

One of those options could be a university that has its own language centre. Those are basically language academies with higher requirements, which means that they pay a bit better. At the beginning of 2020, I was offered 30,000 pesos per hour by a private university in Bucaramanga. In 2022, a university in Medellín would have paid me 40,000 per hour had I accepted the contract. I turned both offers down for various reasons, but working for a university language centre is worth considering. There are also other, better-paying university roles (e.g. a lecturer), which usually require more advanced qualifications, such as an MA in TESOL or a PhD.

As you can see, typical teaching jobs in Colombia don’t pay that well if you convert the hourly rate to US dollars or euros. The highest fee I have seen advertised was a teaching job with the British Council that paid 75,000 pesos per hour. That is good money by Colombian standards, and I think it would be a nice option for a Delta-qualified teacher, but since I have absolutely no interest in living in Bogotá, I didn’t even apply for it.

Inevitably, many teachers realise that offering private classes can be financially more interesting than working for an institution. This is a popular choice especially among those who have a resident visa with an open work permit. You can look for students by yourself or use platforms such as Preply. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you can easily earn more than what language academies and university language centres will offer you. My personal recommendation is to run online courses for groups of students. If you manage to find five or six participants, you can expect to make more money than when teaching the same number of students at the British Council.

It goes without saying that having income from abroad and getting paid in a foreign currency is a goal that many teachers who live in Colombia wish to achieve. Students based in other countries may be able to pay higher fees, which makes everything easier. The government’s decision to approve the digital nomad visa allows professionals to work remotely for foreign companies while living in Colombia, and that’s something that may appeal to some teachers working fully online.

Another good idea is to explore other areas of ELT. Teaching English is a rewarding job, but you can also get involved in teacher training, materials writing, assessment, editing, etc. It requires a lot of effort since you need to obtain relevant qualifications and become really good at something else than teaching. I believe it’s worth it, both professionally and financially; in fact, the highest hourly rate I have received from a Colombian institution has been 100,000 pesos for a one-hour webinar.

If you wish to get involved in non-teaching work, you can try to work your way up in an institution or actively look for work elsewhere. There are plenty of in-person and remote jobs advertised online. I highly recommend following Atena Juszko on LinkedIn; her job lists focusing on publishing and edtech roles are very useful.

To be completely honest, due to the combination of low salaries in entry-level teaching jobs and the rising cost of living, Colombia isn’t a good destination for new teachers without experience. That said, if you’re willing to work on your professional development, you can find opportunities to make progress in your ELT career and earn decent money while living here. There are several ways you can achieve that; I chose to go freelance and diversify my income. I work (1) with institutions and individuals, (2) in person and online, (3) on teaching and non-teaching projects, and (4) with local and foreign-based clients.

When it comes to monthly expenses, everything depends on your lifestyle and what you like to spend money on. In my case, the bare minimum I need to earn each month is 4 million pesos. This amount allows me to pay the rent, utility bills, social security, groceries, and other common expenses. It also leaves me with some extra money, which is extremely helpful since you never know what might happen. For example, a few months ago I lost almost a million pesos due to the bankruptcy of Viva Air, a local airline that I had booked a couple of flights with.

Having multiple sources of income requires good organisational skills, but I believe that being a freelancer is something that can work pretty well in the Colombian context. Fortunately, I recently managed to get a really good non-teaching contract that helps me earn significantly more than the aforementioned bare minimum. I know that these good times won’t last forever and there are going to be a few bumps in the road, but it feels nice to be genuinely happy with my monthly income for the first time in my ELT career.

► If you enjoyed this blog post, I recommend that you read More Than a Gap Year Adventure, a collaborative book aimed at those who wish to have a long-term career in our profession.